The octopus is chemoctactic; it can taste what it touches. Its suction cups have about 200 taste buds per arm, so if it likes something … well, best not to be the something it likes. Those who enjoy octopus sushi should keep in mind that under different circumstances that sucker could have been tasting you back.

If you’ve seen one of these in the swimming pool, you might have thought it was a stick bug that didn’t get the camouflage memo and forgot to stay in the sticks.

Actually, it’s a water scorpion, mostly harmless (unless you’re a mayfly or freshwater shrimp) and not a scorpion at all. It’s an insect with six legs, as opposed to an arachnid, which is an invertebrate with eight. It’s similar in appearance, though, especially its grasping forelimbs that resemble a scorpion’s pincers. Then there’s that tail—that magnificent tail—it breathes through.

Between a set of claws that would make Nosferatu think “gah, get a manicure,” and a nose that looks like someone stuck a Dalek to its face, the star-nosed mole is so weird looking that if you saw it in a sci-fi movie you’d think they’d gone overboard with the effects.

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The star-nosed mole’s firework of a proboscis Photograph by Ken Catania, National Geographic Stock

The star-nosed mole’s firework of a proboscis. Photograph by Ken Catania, National Geographci StockAnd yet that firework of a proboscis has exceptional powers. Not only can it smell things underwater (if it sounds easy, you try it), but the mole also uses it like fingers to touch and figure out its surroundings (it’s more or less blind).

An insect called the water boatman, not much bigger than a sprinkle on a cupcake, makes a chirping sound by rubbing its penis against its belly, a musical innovation similar to the way male crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together.

We use the phrase having your “ear to the ground” to mean staying on the alert, but elephants’ hearing is kept to the ground—almost literally—through their feet. Stanford researcher Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell theorized back in 1992 that elephants communicate through seismic vibrations, and years of research proved the theory true.

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Orphan elephants walk through the nursery at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic

Elephants, for example, send warnings to other elephants by trumpeting and stamping the ground; recipients respond in ways such as vacating the area earlier than usual. (Video: “How Elephants ‘Hear’ With Their Feet.”)